No other television series-- let alone a cancelled television series-- has had the extraordinary afterlife of STAR TREK. Through fan conventions, novels, follow-on television series, and a string of feature films, TREK has earned a significant and lasting place in American popular culture. A generation or two of scientists and engineers has also grown up watching the show, and some of those people-- perhaps curiously, but, then again, perhaps not-- have taken to trying to determine if the "technologies" used in the show might actually work.
The latest such attempt is a look at STAR TREK's famous warp drive. A physicist and Trekker has come to the conclusion that travel at close to the speed of light is impossible because, at such speeds, the stray hydrogen atoms in interstellar space would rip through the ship and kill the crew with lethal radiation. Of course, warp drive in the TREK universe allows ships to travel at multiples of the speed of light. His analysis seemingly doesn't address the behavior of hydrogen atoms in that context.
The Trekker in this fellow no doubt understood the error he was making, but it seems the physicist in him couldn't help himself.
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